


well & good but also not at all

by Ithurielistic



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: Bounty Hunting, EVERYTHING GOES WRONG, Gen, Jet & Spike friendship, Near Death, One-Shot, Worry, everyone is worried, no one dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 14:24:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11292483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ithurielistic/pseuds/Ithurielistic
Summary: It's life as usual, chasing some bum gun dealers through the galaxy to cash in their bounty.That includes all the usual shenanigans, unfortunately.





	well & good but also not at all

There were some situations that Spike didn't try to explain even to himself, given that they required too much cognitive power to even puzzle out, or were so embarressing that he’d rather just forget about it for good. It was one of the latter.

It had all started on some shady planetoid, about as far from a warp gate as was possible.

"You're sure this is it?" Jet leaned over the seat suspiciously and stared at the planet's darker side. They hung in a rugged orbital above it, partially hidden by a rocky satellite. Spike wouldn't call it a moon. It was more of a chunk of asteroid that had gotten pulled into the planet's gravitational field, but was too lazy to fall to the surface. It was great for concealing certain ships, though.

"I'm sure his ship docked here. We all saw it. Are you sure you have eyes?" Faye snapped irritably.

Spike yawned loudly. None of them had gotten much sleep, tracking down this Hiyeki Tracer guy through the galaxy. He couldn't have gotten much shut-eye either, taking such a round-about path through out-of-the-way solar systems, practically doing figure-eights in space.

He obviously hadn't wanted to be followed, but they weren't bounty hunters for nothing. Spike had stached a tracker in the man's cargo bay while Faye had chatted with him flirtatiously. He was probably still reeling from the attention.

Plus, Hiyeki didn't exactly do a good job at throwing them off his scent. He clearly didn't do this solo thing very often, and it would've been easy to tail him without the tracker. But now it enabled them to track him across the planet's surface, shining like a beacon on their radar.

They were counting on that, really.

"So where's his partner, then?" Jet shot back at Faye. She balled up her fists in indignation.

Spike yawned again, although not as obnoxiously. "Right there, about," he said, tracing over a general area with his finger on the map, and tapping a valley near the middle of the planet's surface. "That's where Hiyeki's headed now. We should find the stache with him, or on the ship, which is docked," he gestured to another beacon on the planet's surface, "here."

Faye's sour mood evaporated at that. "Easy-peasy."

A twenty-million bounty for a pair of amateur weapons dealers? They could hardly pass up such a ripe opportunity. Hiyeki Tracer and Young Smitt were in for quite the surprise.

They jetted silently to the planet's surface bundled in subzero gear, Faye and Ein staying behind in case of sudden attack. Well, to be fair, Ein stayed behind because he was a dog, and as a general rule dogs couldn't really be trusted with capturing criminals. Still, in this part of space, one could never be too careful. This was where outlaws tended to gather.

He and Jet found the ship right where their system indicated it would be, seated amidst a pile of ragged-edged boulders where it was sheltered from the violent winds. They approached, but it was vacant. The two skirted around to the back of the hulking metal machine. "Bingo!" Spike and Jet shared a mutual grin.

Spike picked the lock on the cargo bay door while Jet peered over his shoulder and let it slide open seamlessly, a wall of insulated air drifting over them. Their flashlights revealed long stacks of unassming padded crates, which hid rows upon rows of scoped, high-end gun barrels, worth thousands apiece, and streamlined rifle bodies.

Jet chuckled at the sight, itching to get his hands on one of them. "I'll take care of this. You go find our 'gun merchants'."

Spike gave his partner a two-fingered salute, and darted into the frigid outer air once more. A swath of clouds had begun to creep across the reddish sky above, and Spike decided he'd rather not freeze to death in this instance.

Already he felt the bite of the dropping temperatures on his skin, and he hurried himself even more across the semi-frozen tundra.

Everything had been going so perfect, it was almost inevitable that something had to go wrong eventually. That was a general rule of life that Spike had accepted long ago. he just hadn't expected it to come back to bite him so hard. It was embarrassing, really.

He'd reached the site to find it devoid of any and all shady back-room dealers. The shack that they'd assumed was a hideout of some sort was mostly half-intact walls, delapitated enough that he could see wholly into the worn-down shack save an intact corner. Spike stood dumbly for a moment before preparing to retreat, eyes darting to and fro for any sign of threat. Something was off about the situation; it smelled bad, like sour milk in cereal.

The hair on the back of his neck stood stock-straight as Spike drew his sidearm and backed toward an outcropping of rocks to his left to provide cover. That wasn't the best decision he'd ever made, because from that very same patch of rocks Spike caught a glimpse of a gun barrel peeping towards him from the corner of his eye.

"Oh sh-" a curse came halfway from his lips as he spun, and the first bullet ricoshed off of a stone near his foot, a loud crack accompanying it, ringing in his ears. He could only hope the rippling echo reached Jet's location.

Spike broke into a run, heading for the limited cover of the shack so he could return fire. Beggars can't be choosers, you know, and Spike hated being helpless. It cramped his style. His long legs easily spanned the distance, the sniper only managing to get off one more shot before he'd reached cover.

Spike flung himself over what was left of the wall and crouched behind it, breaths coming heavy. His pistol was like ice in his fingers, the metal reacting to the temperature's steady drop.

A bullet buried itself into plaster near Spike's head. He had to stop this soon, or both him and the sniper would freeze in their boots before ever managing to kill the other.

Spike let one eye peer from behind the coverage of the wall, and brought his pistol closer to his face. The sniper was lying on the ground behind the shallow outcropping of rocks, the only visible part of him a tuft of ratty white-blonde hair. So, it was Hiyeki. That would explain why Spike wasn't dead; his partner was the hit man, and Spike assumed that made him at least a decent shot, unlike this clown.

Wait a second.

Speaking of, where was Hiyeki's-

Cold metal pressed against the back of Spike's neck. "You really thought we didn't see you comin' from a mile away?"

-Partner. Great timing.

Spike cursed the wind whipping in his ears. It must have enabled the man's silent approach. "Well, I thought we were pretty great," Spike said, for lack of anything else.

The man, Young Smitt, jostled the gun's barrel against his bare skin, where it burned like ice. "Drop ya gun, bounty hunter. Drop it!" Spike did so, quite gladly, letting the pistol clatter to the ground. "Tracer, I got em'!" Young called to his partner, who Spike saw clamber up a little unsteadily from the rocks, rifle in hand. The cold must've stiffened up his joints like it had Spike's. Hiyeki gave a wordless thumbs up and made his way towards them.

Spike kept his gaze forwards, eye trained on the man whose bounty was right in front of him. He just needed to figure out how to extract himself from this mess. Chances were, Jet'd heard the gunshots and was rushing his way. Okay, maybe not rushing. Jet didn't really subscribe to the whole "hurrying" lifestyle when it didn't seem imperative he do so. He was en route, at least, though.

Young waited until Hiyeki was within earshot to say, "What should we do with this one?"

Spike would have made a move then, while Young was looking away, but the telltale sound of a trigger being pulled slightly downwards gave him pause. So this guy was serious, huh?

He hoped the safety was on. Well, if there was a safety in the first place. Second-rate pistols sometimes skipped that bit in the factory, which left a whole lot less room for error.

"Should we kill 'em?" Young said when his partner didn't come up with an answer quickly enough.

Hiyeki, who was now standing just inside Spike's immediate line of sight, blanched a little. "I don't like killing," he protested. He was rubbing his hand together distractedly.

"But maiming, sure." From the tone coloring his voice, Young had probably rolled his eyes. He must've been referring to the shooting act Hiyeki pulled earlier. It figured that he wasn't aiming to kill, or Spike might be a corpse in the snow around now.

Hiyeki frowned, obviously thinking. Hopefully not about maiming him, but with Spike's luck, he probably was. "Just don't shoot me in the knee, alright?" Spike thought loudly, hoping it would somehow carry. Subliminal messages, or something.

"There's an old well, 'bout half a kilo from here. How about we just dump him?" Oh, heck.

"He's still a goner," said Young. "With this storm a'brewin? It won't take more than an hour, maybe two, 'fore he's a popsicle. Froze through and through." The amount of detail he put into that explaination was disturbing.

"Yeah, but I don't have to watch," was Hiyeki's reply.

"Thanks, guys," Spike thought. "Just what my day needed. Freezing to death in a hole."

They ended up having to half-drag him to the well's location, Spike having decided that his best option was dragging his heels to buy time. When Young threatened to blow out his kneecaps and dump him, though, he did it in subtler ways. Like tripping excessively.

There was a fair amount of loose rock to accommodate him, in any case. The cold had crept into his bones, numbing his limbs so much that Spike hardly had to pretend. The wind had quickened from a chilling breeze into something frantic and animal, tugging at their gear and nipping at their faces like hungry termites.

As the temperature dropped, so did any conversation between the two men holding guns to Spike's back, replaced with the gritting of teeth and a cold silence. Spike wondered, briefly, if the hands clamped around his arms were frozen there.

For an eternity, it seemed as if the well was a myth, and they would keep walking until the storm shattered their frozen corpses. But they reached it after all, a hole in the frozen plane, dark and despairing.

As they stood over it, Young broke the silence. "You s-should've said it was s-so far away-y, an-nd I would-would've shot him on s-sight." The cold made his tongue slow, and his jaw jumped up and down as he spoke.

Spike's limbs felt sluggish.

But that meant that Hiyeki and Young's did too. This would be the last chance Spike had- "Before I die," Spike thought. Reality froze his limbs even further.

Hiyeki's adam's apple bobbed, dismay etched on his bright red face. "S-s-sorry, Y-y-y-"

"Shut up already!" Young spat, annoyed with his partner.

Now was the time to act.

"Now's the time, before I-" Spike cut off his thought, and sprung into action. Ripping his arms from the men's grips with adrenaline-fueled strength, he spun and delivered a punch directly into the center of Hiyeki's face. The guns clattered from their numb hands as they both fell back.

Spike's movements were slower than usual, but the blow still sent Hiyeki reeling sideways, past Spike, blood spurting forth like a fountain from his nose and christening them with flecks of crimson. His foot caught on the edge of the well, and he teetered comically for a split second before toppling in, a cry tearing from his lips, face drawn into a caricature of horror as he plummeted into what should've been Spike's grave. It seemed like hours before the hideous thump reached Spike's ears, and then there was nothing.

Well, that took care of half of his problem. Or, more like a fourth of his problem. Unfortunately, that left the mountain of a man before him, whose expression was slowly metamorphizing from shock into the first telltale signs of outrage, violence brewing like thunderstorms in his eyes.

Spike didn't let himself miss a beat and shifted, falling with the momentum of the punch and aimed a kick at Young's chest. The man caught his foot and tried to throw him to the ground, but Spike managed to rip his leg from Young's grip at the last second and thrust his foot into Young's adam's apple, leaving the man gagging for air. While his opponent clutched at his throat with one hand, Spike scanned the ground for one of the guns, lightning fast.

His vision was blurred by the near-microscopic flecks of ice that whipped across his vision like sand.

As Spike leaned back to dodge a punch, the unthinkable happened. He slipped.

Time flowed slower for a split second as Spike's brain tried to catch up with his body and make sense of what happened. His foot continued to slide out from under his body, finding no purchase on the slick, icy groups as he reached out his arms and met only air and bitter ice, falling backwards.

Spike caught only a glimpse of Young's face, in the midst of stretching in to a terrifying grin, before suddenly his world went dark. The was universe a pinprick above him, growing steadily smaller as he plummeted into a dry abyss. The sensation of cold sand against his skin was gone, replaced with wind pushing up past his ears and whistling through his hair.

It couldn't have been more than a few seconds, but if felt like an eternal flight.

Then Spike hit bottom with a jolt, his head striking something warm, softer than stone, and his arm buckling beneath him like crumpled tissue paper. It took a moment for Spike to even realize what had happened as he stared up at the storm raging on the planet's surface.

"I fell," he thought stupidly. His left arm throbbed dully, and he used his right to carefully push himself onto his back and extract the limb from beneath him. He held it in front of him and in the darkness it looked like his arm could've had an extra joint flapping in the air. It hung almost like a puppet whose strings had been snipped, and Spike set it in his lap, a limp ragdoll made of his own body. He looked down for the first time at what he'd landed on.

Hiyeki's eyes glared up at him like polished marble where they caught a faint beam of light, gaze somehow oriented so perfectly that they almost met Spike's, lingering just past his ear. "Well, thanks for the soft landing." Spike couldn't tell if he had spoken it out loud or just in his thoughts. "Really took one for the team," he said.

Hiyeki just stared. He must've struck his head on the walls, and his legs were just as twisted as Spike's arm. "I'm lucky that didn't happen to me," Spike thought. He couldn't tell if his eyes were open or closed, since either way he saw Hiyeki's face staring at him in pity, because at least he died quickly. It was so cold, he probably hardly felt it before his skull cracked open like an egg.

Spike didn't want to lay down his head on the remains of the man he killed, but eventually it dropped of its own volition like a boulder. The world above continued to move silent as the overlapping of shadows, and Spike lost hold of time itself.

What seemed like centuries later a shot fired, echoing faintly into his ears, then another, and a third, and Spike opened his eyes. Or did he close them? He gazed at the opening of the well, far above his head, where white sand danced with the howling wind. A voice echoed down into the abyss. "Spike! Are you there? Spike!"

"Jet!" Spike called, but the sound was only in his mind. His jaw wouldn't move. A blurred shadow leaned over the edge of the well, blocking out the sky, and everything was dark.

Spike lay unconscious through Jet’s furious attempts to raise him from the well. He floated on a sea of darkness as his body was lifted to the space-hopper by a pulley, and as Jet piloted them to the Bebop, stone-faced.

Eventually the world swam into existence, and it was with a pounding headache that Spike awoke to, and the sensation of a wet tongue lapping at his cheek. He groaned loudly and attempted to swat away the offending perpetrator (he hoped it was Ein), but his arm wouldn’t move.

His eyelids felt like cement replicas of what they should be, and he pulled them open sluggishly, squinting against the onslaught of bright light. He was greeted with two faces hovering above him. Faye and Jet. "Oh," he groaned.

"Spike, you hit your head. Do you remember anything?" One of them said, he wasn’t quite sure which, and Spike fought the urge to cover his eyes with his non-mobile arm. If he could remember which one it was.

"Unfortunately," Spike said, voice scratchy.

"You really bit it, didn’t you?" said Faye, mockingly amused.

Jet leaned back and crossed his arms, looking somewhat unamused, unlike Faye. "Thought you were a goner for a second there."

"Did you catch Young?" Spike tried to change the subject from his somewhat embarressing condition.

Jet looked away, stubborn embarrassment on his face. "I may have shot him," he said. "In the chest. Three times."

"What?" Spike groaned. "All that money..." His arm began to throb angrily at his side like a pest was gnawing at it.

"I wasn't the guy who shoved our other bounty down a well!"

"I didn't shove him! And for your information, I would be dead if I hadn't!"

"Both of you, shut up!" Faye yelled.

Jet retorted quickly, "You shut up!"

"I’ve had it with you!" Faye spat as Ein began to bark.

Despite himself, Spike smiled a bit. Whatever happened, he could count on this chaotic bunch to save his sorry hide and argue about it after.

They were a strange bunch, but families usually were. It might be worth it, after all. (If they weren't so broke).

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for taking the time to read this!!! It means a whole lot to me :)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this wacky little thing!


End file.
